The Camp David Accords, 1978

What happened

On Nov. 9, 1977, Anwar Sadat announced that he was willing to go to Jerusalem. ¹ He went that month, and he said so from the podium of the Knesset. ⁶ The trip skipped the multilateral conference machinery entirely and turned the problem into two men talking. ¹

Talking did not finish it. Ten months later Jimmy Carter brought Sadat and Menachem Begin to Camp David, the presidential retreat in Maryland, from Sept. 5 to Sept. 17, 1978. ¹ On Sept. 7 the argument over Israeli settlements in Sinai got loud enough that Carter had to step in, with Sadat demanding removal and Begin saying dismantling them would bring down his government. ² By Sept. 8 the two men had stopped speaking to each other directly and Carter was carrying messages between cabins. ² On Sept. 10, to break the claustrophobia, Carter drove everyone to Gettysburg, where Begin recited the Gettysburg Address from memory. ² On Sept. 15 Sadat announced he was leaving, and Carter went to his cabin and talked him out of it. ² Begin's own note on the American draft the next day read, in part, "Ultimatum, Excessive Demands, Suicide." ² He then agreed to put the settlements question to a Knesset vote. ²

Twenty-three drafts later there were two documents. ² "A Framework for Peace in the Middle East" set out a formula for Palestinian self-government in the West Bank and Gaza. ^{3 1} "A Framework for the Conclusion of a Peace Treaty Between Egypt and Israel" handled the bilateral piece. ³ Both were built on Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338. ⁶ The places where the two sides could not agree were parked in side letters rather than papered over. ²

The treaty itself came six months later, signed at the White House on March 26, 1979. ⁶ Article I ends the state of war on the exchange of ratifications and commits Israel to withdraw all armed forces and civilians from Sinai behind the international boundary, with Egypt resuming full sovereignty there. ⁴ Article II fixes the permanent border as "the recognized international boundary between Egypt and the former mandated territory of Palestine." ⁴ Article III commits both to normal diplomatic, economic and cultural relations. ⁴ The timetable was three years to complete withdrawal, with an interim pullback within nine months to a line running from east of El-Arish to Ras Mohammed, and normalization beginning after that interim step. ⁴ Egypt agreed to Israeli passage through the Suez Canal, the Straits of Tiran and the Gulf of Aqaba. ⁶

Israel paid the bill in full. Fourteen Jewish communities had been built in Sinai after 1967, the largest of them Yamit, with roughly 600 dwellings by 1982. ⁵ The evacuation ran to April 23, 1982. ⁵ Followers of Rabbi Meir Kahane barricaded themselves in houses and threw sand and burning tires at soldiers, who answered with foam and high-pressure hoses and lowered men onto the roofs in cages. ⁵ Nobody was killed. ⁵ When it was over the army demolished most of what was standing. ⁵

Sadat did not live to see it. He was shot dead in Cairo on Oct. 6, 1981, by Islamist gunmen, for the peace. ⁷ Hosni Mubarak, his vice president, succeeded him. ⁷

Why it still matters

The Camp David frameworks are the only case where the land-for-peace formula was carried out to the last clause by both parties. Israel handed back the whole of Sinai on the schedule the treaty set, uprooted its own citizens to do it, and got a fixed international boundary in return. ^{4 5} Every later negotiation, Oslo included, is arguing about a template that has exactly one completed example.

The standard description is a cold peace: embassies are open, tourism is thin, and the two publics have never really warmed to each other. ⁶ It is also durable in the way that matters. It survived the assassination of the man who signed it, and it survived Israel's invasion of Lebanon in 1982, which Mubarak met with silence where Sadat, by one Israeli intelligence assessment at the time, might have torn the treaty up to protect his standing. ⁷ Egypt has since spent years as the back channel between Israel and Hamas, brokering ceasefires behind the scenes. ⁶

Our view, and we will label it as ours: the durability is the argument. Critics of the deal in 1979 said Begin had traded a real asset for a signature from a regime that could change its mind. The signature has outlasted the regime that gave it, and Sinai never came back as a launching pad.

The unfinished half is the other lesson. The Palestinian framework, the piece that was supposed to produce self-government in the West Bank and Gaza, was the hardest part of the negotiation and the part that went nowhere. ¹ Jordan and Saudi Arabia declined to sign on, and the questions left open at Camp David, how Resolution 242 applies to the West Bank and what happens to Israeli settlements there, are the same questions still open now. ¹ The bilateral deal worked because it had a clean trade at its center: a defined piece of territory for a defined peace between two states with an agreed border.

Begin and Sadat shared the Nobel Peace Prize a month after Camp David. ³ Carter, who did the shuttling between the cabins, got his in December 2002. ³

The words you'll hear

Camp David Accords. The two framework agreements signed Sept. 17, 1978, after a thirteen-day summit at the presidential retreat in Maryland. ¹ They are the agreement to write the peace treaty that came six months later. ³

The Framework for Peace in the Middle East. The broader of the two documents, containing a formula for Palestinian self-government in the West Bank and Gaza that was never implemented. ^{3 1}

The Egypt-Israel Treaty of Peace. Signed at the White House on March 26, 1979. ⁶ It ended the state of war, fixed the international boundary as the permanent border, and set a three-year schedule for full Israeli withdrawal from Sinai. ⁴

Yamit. The largest of the fourteen Israeli communities built in Sinai, evacuated by the Israeli army on April 23, 1982, with resistance from Kahane's followers and no fatalities. ⁵

Cold peace. The usual shorthand for Egypt-Israel relations since 1979: formal diplomatic ties and security cooperation without warmth between the two publics. ⁶

Land for peace. The trade at the center of the treaty, territory captured in 1967 returned in exchange for recognition and a fixed border, and the only time it has been completed. ^{4 6}